


i work til i ache in my bones

by almadeamla



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-10-14 23:16:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17517686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almadeamla/pseuds/almadeamla
Summary: Rick and Shane share more than a history. They share a father. Too bad they don’t know.





	1. in the beginning

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first TWD fanfic since 2012. I haven’t written fanfic in like 6 years. I’m super rusty. I apologize.
> 
> This came from an idea I had with a friend long ago that was basically, what if Rick and Shane really WERE brothers, but they didn’t know. Except maybe Shane did know and some shit went down about it. Terrible summary. I know. This first chapter is fucking weird. It’s a weird prequel. But I couldn’t even start to writing the actual Rick/Shane parts without it. It’s mostly setting the scene for the future Shane and Rick angst. I may delete it when I finish the second Shane-centric piece in the next few weeks.
> 
> Oh and I stole the title from ‘Somebody to Love’ by Queen. Obvs.
> 
> And as for the Rick/Shane and the explicit rating, that comes next chapter. Hoo boy.

_In the beginning_

A light rain started at twilight. It grew heavier the closer the sun came to rising, fat droplets plunking down hard into the bed of Joe’s pickup. The sight should have been breathtaking, the colors of the sunrise melded together, raindrops like crystals, a reprieve from the mugginess of summer. But to Joe it was as colorless as a gray overcast morning in winter.

He got into the truck and drove. Muscle memory took him toward Liz’s parents house. He swerved a hard left to avoid it, continued on down, back onto Main Street. He would drive until he found somewhere to go.

Liz usually cooked him breakfast on his day off. She always answered the door in the same clothes she’d worn to church that morning. She would have a feast waiting for him: eggs and bacon, homefries she learned to make from her mother, biscuits and gravy, sometimes flapjacks or thick slices of Texas toast. She’d pile Joe’s plate and watch him eat until he was fit to bursting, not a single hair out of place, her blouse never wrinkled, and she’d kiss him on the cheek before she sent him home.

Joe pulled up to Eddy’s Diner. It was as good a place as any.

He sat at the counter, reveled in the scent of coffee and butter. That, at least, was a smell like home.

“Joe Grimes, aren’t you a sight.”

He looked up and he’d know those dark eyes anywhere, that sweep of hair that cascaded over her shoulders, loose and thickly curled. It covered her name tag. “Lorna?”

“Been a while, ain’t it?” She winked, pouring him a mug of coffee, laughing. He hadn’t seen her since they were sixteen and she ran off, in a bit of a scandal, with a graduating senior to Albuquerque.

“Six years.” They’d been good to her, or maybe Albuquerque had been good to her. Her skin was golden, her face had sharpened, and she’d finally grown into her nose. “How is Mike doing?”

“Oh,” she waved a hand and pulled out her order pad, “you know. And how about Eliza?”

He swallowed a burning mouthful of coffee, felt the pain run from his tongue down his throat. He let that pain steady him. “She goes by Liz now. But uh, you know.”

“Mmm.” Lorna hummed, pen tapping. She scribbled something. “I’ll bring you out the special.”

Joe watched her disappear into the kitchen. Her hips swayed, wider than they’d been as a teenager, her thighs shapely and full. In high school Liz had always said Lorna was trouble, and in the years since, Joe had learned Liz was never wrong.

After a refill of coffee Lorna brought him out his order. Two eggs, two strips of bacon, and a shortstack with fresh summer berries.

“So what’ve you been up to? Still playin’ baseball?”

Joe shrugged. “A bit, in college. I work for the Sheriff’s office now.”

“You always did love playing cops and robbers.” Lorna smiled and it took him back, to pinning paper stars to his shirts, making a gun from his thumb and pointer finger, searching for the kids playing robbers in the bushes outside Lorna’s house. She’d wave to him from the window where her mama had her dutifully practicing the piano or sewing and that little smile would make the already scorching day hotter.

“Turns out I’m not so bad at the real thing too.”

Lorna left him to attend other customers. Joe ate his breakfast in silence. It was almost peaceful, but he missed the chatter, Liz letting him know their plans for the week. He drank his cooling coffee and watched Lorna work. She charmed every customer, batting those lashes, making every man in there for breakfast feel he was the center of her world.

Joe finished his meal. He left an excessive tip of three dollars and decided next Sunday he would try somewhere else.

“Joe!” Lorna rushed out from behind the counter, heels clacking, her hips squeezed tight in her blue uniform skirt. She threw her arms around him and he smelled something sweet—flowers and honey, jam and fruit. “I’m off at ten tonight. Come back and pick me up.”

In a daze, he heard himself answering, “okay Lorna, sure.”

Lorna was on the curb waiting for him in the evening, illuminated by the streetlight, smoking a cigarette. She’d changed out of her uniform into a tiny yellow sundress. Her legs were as shapely as the outline beneath her uniform had promised. She tossed her red lipstick smudged cigarette onto the ground when she saw him.

“How was work?” Joe asked for lack of anything better when she hopped into his truck.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh honey don’t get me started.”

“Where are we going?”

Lorna pointed with the tip of her newly lit cigarette. The smoke hung around them, familiar, those old fashioned lady Marlboros Joe’s grandmother had liked to smoke. He thought for a moment she was leading him to the poolhall, and he didn’t have it in him to spend a night making small talk with her while hung up on another girl.

“Pull in here,” Lorna said all of a sudden. The truck wheels squealed over gravel as Joe turned into the driveway of a little eggshell colored house.

Lorna got out, started up the path to the house, then stopped. She turned around and hollered, “you coming?”

Joe would never go inside on a first date proper. Tonight he supposed he would. He followed her out into darkness. The moon was hiding behind clouds, sequestered off in secret, he thought, so as not to witness his transgressions. He did the gentlemanly thing and took Lorna’s keys from her hand so she could finish her cigarette while he opened her front door.

The first time Joe had gone over to Liz’s house when her parents weren’t home she’d made him lemonade and cookies. They sat in the parlor and watched television, hardly speaking to one another out of nerves.

Lorna led him right on past the parlor and down the hallway. She pulled him into her bedroom. Her bed was rumpled, duvet hanging off one side of the mattress and dipping onto the floor. It smelled lived in, not of wash and cleaning chemicals, a little musty, like an occasional damp towel got left hanging around.

“Lorna, I wouldn’t want to—”

“I do.” She said. Then they were kissing, Lorna’s mouth hot, fiercely demanding. It was the kiss of a woman, a kiss that bore hot embers of lust to life in his belly. It was a kiss he felt in his bones.

She dragged him down onto the mattress, pinned him to her sheets with her thighs. Joe could do nothing but blink up at her, the deep black of her eyes was electric, shiny as polished stones.

She got his pants open. He knew he should say stop, that they shouldn’t, that she was a better girl than this. There were a list of reasons they shouldn’t, and none felt as good. Lorna sinking right down onto him—it was heaven, paradise, Joe had to pull her closer.

“Oh,” she moaned, “oh baby, oh.” She rode him, the skirt of her sundress hitched up around her waist, her breasts bouncing. He fit the curve of his mouth to her skin.

That was the beginning of the end for him. Joe wasn’t a strong enough man to stop going back for more.

***

“Joe,” Liz said, six weeks later. Her face pinched to pallor. “I’m pregnant.”

“Marry me,” he said, and he left her, only for a second, to go and get the ring he’d bought for Lorna out of his drawer.

***

“Get me a cinnamon roll from Eddy’s,” Liz asked, both her hands holding her stomach. It shocked him, even now, to see Liz, a tiny slip of a girl, starting to round out. Shocked him even more to be here and married, set up in a house just like his mama and daddy, ready to start his life in full. It was a dream he’d never thought would happen, not after Liz said it was best they start seeing other people seven months ago, and wished him well. “Oh and some pancakes.”

“You sure? I bet if I called your mother she’d be here in an hour with enough sweets to feed an army.”

Liz shook her head, bun wagging cutely on top of her head. “No.”

“Anything you want,” Joe said. His stomach rolled once, like an old engine finally turning over. He hadn’t seen Lorna since the before the wedding. He figured it was time.

Lorna was working when he walked in, her back to the counter while she added a new filter to the coffee pot. Joe sat down and braced himself for what was to come. What did you owe a girl who winked in and out of your life in a heartbeat? A girl you’d fooled yourself once into thinking was the love of your life?

“Hey Lor—” His voice died and he near fell over. The barstool was the only thing that kept him up.

“Joe,” Lorna said, leaning over to pour him a coffee, the swell of her belly overgrown. “Let me get you a menu.”

“Lorna,” Joe said “Lorna, oh.”

***

Joe’d always thought of himself as a good man. An honest one. A man who did the right thing even when it was hard. But he knew the second he saw Lorna, months in the family way, that he was no man deserving of anything. Not a spec of kindness. Not his sweet wife’s gracious affections. Not his cherub-faced son, his own spitting image, toddling after him day after day, slowly shaping up to be a better man than his father.

He hadn’t seen hide nor tail of Lorna since the day in the diner. He’d used his position once, only once, to look up county records. There was a Shane Walsh born, seven pounds and four ounces, in late May. Even then, Lorna had let him take the easy way out. She’d given their son that boy she’d run off with’s last name.

***

Shane was a thought in Joe’s periphery after that, ephemeral, like a tide, swelling Joe’s heart tight with sadness that came and went. It was easy to forget about the son he’d never met when he had another that needed him. His little Richard, named for his grandfather, Rick because Liz immediately rebuffed all attempts by her parents to call him little Dick.

Rick’s first day of school brought the mostly healed over wound of his summer with Lorna to blood again.

By luck of the draw, a mean streak of fate, there she was. Herding a small boy toward the coat rack. Shane. Joe had pictured a boy his same spitting image—Rick’s twin, or a hellion like he’d been as a young boy, a tornado of chaos everywhere he went. What he saw instead was a wild haired little boy, Lorna’s dark eyes and no trace of Joe to him, sticking close to his mother’s leg.

“Is that you Eliza?” Lorna asked, eyes big, and oh, was she a liar.

“Lorna!” Liz smiled, forcing pleasant. Joe had always admired that about her, how she could be polite to General Sherman himself if her etiquette called for it. “Are you here with your boy?”

Lorna nodded. She pushed Shane forward. “Say hello, baby.”

“Hello,” Shane said, shyly.

It was Liz’s turn to prod Rick for introductions. Joe watched Lorna inspect Rick, evaluating him, looking like Joe had for where the two were in sync.

Rick’s curls were slicked flat—Liz had waged fierce battle with them that morning—and he wore his pressed shirt and church slacks. He held onto a red apple he’d picked out for his teacher. He tipped his head up in greeting like his mama had taught him.

“I’m Rick,” he said.

“Shane.” Shane glanced up at his mother, then back at Rick. “Wanna share a desk?”

“Okay,” Rick said, and the two of them were off, scampering deeper into the classroom, searching for the perfect desk.

“That hair,” Liz clucked to Lorna, but she said it fondly, not like herself.

“Runs in the family,” Lorna said.

***

It was smooth sailing after that. Rick and Shane took to each other like magnets, like real brothers, impossible to pull apart. Shane was a constant fixture in their house once the boys were old enough to go out alone on their bikes. It was almost enough, almost as good as what could have been—his two boys growing up together, knowing each other, right from the start.

He got to watch Shane go through most of his childhood. From the shortstack standing on a phone book to sneak cookies off the countertop to a young man tomcatting about town. Shane was rougher around the edges than Rick, but he was in most ways his mother made over, so it was no surprise.

They held a double graduation party in their backyard when the boys graduated high school. Joe’s pushed for it, arguing for its practicality, but Liz had agreed to it pretty easily, wanting to share the day with Shane too.

Joe left Rick with Lori, the two of them taking pictures, Liz and Lori’s mother cooing as they posed. Rick with his arm around Lori’s shoulders, Lori with the bouquet of flowers Rick bought her pressed to her nose. He wandered over to sit beside Shane in the shade of the cottonwood. He’d already taken off his graduation robes.

“How’s it feel to be done with high school?” Joe asked, settling down beside him.

Shane shrugged. “Same as yesterday.”

“I’m proud of you, son.” Joe clapped Shane on the shoulder, thinking maybe today he’d be able to hug him without anyone wondering. It was hard to temper himself sometimes, to sit during football games and watch Shane run the ball down the field straight to the end zone and reign in his cheers.

“Don’t call me that,” Shane snarled, mouth curled into something ugly.

“She told you.”

Shane scrubbed his face with his hands. “Yeah she fuckin’ told me.”

“How long?” Joe asked, which was his coward’s way of asking _who have you told?_

“Yesterday. After graduation, once we were home. She was drunk.” Shane looked away then and his voice softened. “Nothing new. But. It was bad this time. She got sick. I was helping her get cleaned up after, washing her hair for her in the sink,” Shane mimed scrubbing with his fingers, and Joe felt his gut clench and sour as the summer sun turned cold.

He realized Shane was making him privy to a secret. One that he should have picked up on a long time ago. He wondered how he hadn’t—Lorna and those afternoons passing a bottle of wine back and forth in her bedroom, rum and cokes out in the moonlight, breakfast mimosas and slices of burnt toast.

“Shane—,”

“She said I was a good boy.” Shane just kept going. He was the opposite of Rick, in that way. It was hard to get him to stop talking once he started, all it took was a hairline fracture in the dam and out he flowed. “Started crying. Said I was such a good boy and it wasn’t fair that no one knew it, said _it’s not right he picked Rick over you_. Didn’t say you were my dad outright, but I knew.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t the one to tell you.” He was sure Shane knew he was lying. He’d have taken it to his grave if Lorna had let him. He’d never had an intention of telling Shane the truth. “You have to believe me though, Shane, it was never that I didn’t want you.”

“I don’t care that you picked him over me,” Shane said, and, god, that was worse than the silence.“I get it. My mom, she, you and her weren’t ever gonna be a family. She wasn’t gonna be making you dinner and ironing your clothes. And Mrs. Grimes wouldn’t have stood for that. I know it. She’d never have let me and Rick be around each other if she knew.”

Shane’s shoulders shook and his arms trembled. For a moment Joe thought he was crying, but no, he was angry, vibrating under the strain not to act on it, his hands set to fists. Joe stood up and took a step backwards, just enough to be out of range if Shane started swinging.

“You could have told him,” Shane said at last. “Hell, I could have. He would have accepted it. He wouldn’t have been mad, not for long. Then we coulda been brothers, real ones. He never woulda told Mrs. Grimes if I asked him not to.”

“We’ll sit him down, Shane. You and me, we’ll tell him.”

Shane shook his head violently. “No. Now I can’t ever tell him. And you can’t either. It’ll kill him if he knows.”

“I don’t understand.”

“S’ruined now. I never woulda let him. Not if I’d known.”

“Shane,” Joe said, slowly. “What are you saying?”

Shane covered his face with his hands, red from the nape of his neck to his ears. And in that instant, Joe knew.

He remembered that first day and the days after. Rick coming home flushed, giddy with a secret, the wine-red mark on his neck Joe’d spotted beneath his collar. Rick creeping off, to Shane’s he told them, with his shirt pressed and wearing cologne. They’d assumed he was lying because soon enough there’d been Lori, and then it was weeks before they saw Shane again in their home. “Shane. Christ, no.”

“You get it now? It’s over, man. Now I gotta keep your fuckin’ secret forever and live with my own.” Joe couldn’t meet Shane’s gaze this time, couldn’t stand the flat black hatred in Shane’s dark eyes, couldn’t let himself glimpse the pain there either. His son, aching to be close to his brother, in a way he’d never wanted for his boys.

Joe felt the full weight of what Shane was confessing. It was too much, he wanted to sink to his knees under the strain of it, to retch and moan. He hated Shane in that moment for giving it to him. But he hated himself more than anyone for allowing things to come to pass the way that they had, and at least he could be a father to Shane for the first time now, take on a little of the shame so Shane wouldn’t have to bear it alone.

Shane walked to where Lorna was sitting, off from the other parents, still as pretty as the day Joe left her, drinking beer in a sundress. She lit up as Shane approached her. The smile split her ear to ear. “There’s my baby.”

“C’mon mom,” Shane said. He plucked the bottle out of her hand and set it down on the table. He offered Lorna his arm, to disguise her wobbling, Joe noticed, so she could walk supported out to the car. “Let’s go.”


	2. these pomegranate sunsets ready me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This did not get as explicit as intended? Like there’s sex but I guess I’m saving all the real dirty stuff for the next chapter with Rick.

Shane ran away the summer after graduation. He packed his duffel, the money his mom and grandma Jean gave him, and hitched a ride with the first semi heading west. _We’re tumbleweed people_ his momma whispered to him one of the nights she was lucid drunk, smelling equal of coke and liquor, _we got nothing to hold onto. We blow with the dust._

It was three weeks before he stopped in Albuquerque. It seemed fitting. He and his momma both hightailing to lick their wounds in a land of empty sun.

He made it with a local woman for awhile. Marisol. She kicked him out of her bed after he made her come but let him sleep on the couch. She took him to a spot of property undergoing development, way out in the middle of nowhere, and they smoked and drank inside the skeleton of a partially constructed house.

Instead of booze or weed, one night, Marisol dug a bag of what looked like mushrooms out of her purse.

“It’s peyote,” she told him. “Some Natives here and in Mexico use them to have visions. My cousin from Nogales brought them up.”

“Dame chica,” he said, which sent her laughing, his Spanish was shit, but drugs were drugs, visions or no.

They fed each other the peyote coins. He kissed her fingers where they dropped the peyote into his mouth like a communion wafer, as if she were giving him something holy, something to right the wrongs the world had done to him, and the ones he’d done to himself. He kissed up her hand, to the soft center of her palm, her wrist, her elbow, and they fucked waiting for something to happen, for their visions to start.

He went through a cold sweat of panic in the aftermath of the fucking. Still waiting, his heart beating wildly, drumming a foreign rhythm against his ribs, fast like the powwow dancers he’d seen out in Gallup, too fast to keep up. Shane was afraid what would happen, what he was going to see. Being a faggot was easy enough to handle. The other thing hurt too much to touch.

Then the puking started. Hot cramps seized his stomach, tidal waves of nausea crested and broke, roaring through him, he fell to his knees, sobbing, crawling on all fours through his own vomit, trying to get back to Marisol’s truck. He thought it was the end of him, heaving his guts out in some red dirt desert in Albuquerque. Eventually the sickness tapered off into shudders, throat burning, and when he blinked the peyote swept through his blood. He felt like he was floating underwater, syrupy slow and textured, weightles, everything filtered soft and blue. Could have sworn Rick was standing over him, his face ashen, silhouetted by a huge white corn moon. Shane reached out to touch him but there was nothing but stars against his fingertips. He let himself get caught up in the current, content to drift forever in the ocean of sky swirling above.

Morning came, a sweet desert sunrise, pink clouds hugging close to the mesas, and Shane got to his feet, no longer shaky. Marisol drove him back to town, bought him two tamales from an old woman selling on the street corner, and after collecting his bag from her apartment, Shane started his way home.

***

They played a game in college. _The Things I’ve Done_. It went like this: someone said the worst thing they’d ever done and took a drink. If what you did was worse than the person sharing, you took two.

Shane always won.

It wasn’t the most intellectually stimulating, and he couldn’t quite show off like he could at beer-pong or flip-cup, but it was a way to pass an evening, surrounded by company. It was nice, if only for a little while, to wallow in misery.

For the first time in a long time, at least since the semester started, Rick came with him. Lori had a midterm to study for. Rick was Shane’s for the weekend. Nearly Thanksgiving and they were finally hanging out. Seemed that the only times they saw each other anymore were rushed meals between classes.

Rick didn’t play. He sat with Shane in the circle, sipped from his beer dutifully, but didn’t participate beyond drinking enough to keep a buzz. Shane kept up his victory streak, slugging straight from his own bottle of SoCo, watching the communal vodka get passed around.

“Easy there,” Rick said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You aren’t gonna last ‘til ten at the rate you’re drinking.”

Shane snorted. Showed what Rick knew about him.

“Man my blood’s prob’ly half whiskey.”

Rick frowned, but he got quiet. He never much cared to talk about that. Shane’s mama and all the empties Shane dragged to the curb each week in the garbage can.

Jana went next, “I stole money from my mother.”

Shane took two drinks.

“I peed in the dorm shower.”

Drink.

“I left my bunny in her cage outside in the summer.”

Drink.

So many drinks Shane got dizzy. Mouth gummy, ready to sleep. Usually he’d puke and rally, but he knew if he tried Rick would put up a stink. Had to switch over to water, Rick smiling to himself, gracious enough to let it slide for the time being.

“Hey,” Rick nudged him. “Let’s get out of here. You look like you’re about to fall asleep.”

Their dorm was on the opposite end of campus. It was a good twenty minute stumble. Peaceful outside, warm for November, sky dark as flint rock, no stars, no moon.

“You do this every Friday?” Rick steered him away from some low hanging branches. “Drink yourself stupid and hope you don’t pass out on the walk home?”

“Nah.” Shane thought about the stillness of the desert, Marisol retching somewhere off to the side, that picture pretty evening, so heavy with constellations. “Usually I got a girl with me.”

Rick ignored that. Didn’t ask much of Shane’s love life these days. Not since.

“Interesting game. Are we too old now for Seven Minutes in Heaven?”

“Seems like. Bet we could still get some folks to play spin the bottle, assuming the bottle we spin had tequila in it first.”

Rick huffed, almost provoked to laughter. “Next time you’re around we’ll try it. See if we can get any of the volleyball girls to join. You can bring Lori.”

“I don’t think Lori would be interested.”

Shane spat. Stopped, trying to remember which way they were going. He kept looking for the Grimes’ white picket fence. It’d been months since he’d set foot near it. “Bet a girl like her don’t even have any secrets. Worst thing she ever did was come home five minutes past curfew.”

“Maybe.” Rick was sour now. How he always got when Shane brought up Lori. Didn’t matter if he was paying her compliments or criticisms, Rick took everything to heart. “You got everyone beat already, don’t know why anyone bothers to play.”

Rick walked tucked close against him. Quiet in the pensive way he had. Rick was a thinker, not like Shane, who did what felt right in the moment, and suffered the consequences. Rick opened the front door for him when Shane realized he was too drunk to figure out his keys. Rick was going to have to walk him to his room.

They’d gotten put together with different roommates. Shane’s was never around, always off at the library. Rick’s wanted to be his new best friend. They were on the same floor, at least, just opposite ends of the hall. Rick herded him forward.

Rick got him inside his room and shut the door behind them. He didn’t turn on the light, two of them hushed in the darkness, watching each other, Shane felt himself start to lilt. He had to flop down onto his bed before he ruined it by throwing up.

“Was it that bad, really?” Rick asked him, eyes shut but somehow still looking down at him, and Shane thought he knew for a second. It terrified him. He wasn’t ready for everything to be over so soon.

“What,” he heard himself saying. He tried to sit up, but the coordination required for that was beyond him now.

“No matter what anyone said you kept drinking. Like you couldn’t lose. Was being queer once that awful for you?”

Rick sat on the end of his bed and unlaced his boots. He pulled them off with more tenderness than Shane was used to. It gave him goosebumps and a hot, prickled feeling in his skin. Rick rolled Shane’s socks off his feet, tucked them into the boots on the floor next to the bed. He pressed his thumb into the curve of Shane’s ankle, soft, like he wasn’t aware he was doing it, and traced a bruise. Shane lay there on his back and let him.

“It’s not like that, man.”

“Yeah, okay.” Rick’s thumb kept rubbing, slid on up higher, digging into the meat of his calf muscle, kneading in to work a knot he found loose.

“Rick I would never—” His throat closed up, swollen, choking on nothing. _I would never regret you_.

“So you’ve told me.” Rick dropped Shane’s leg back onto the mattress. Wiped his hands on his jeans. “Get some sleep.”

Shane wanted to call him back. Or charge after him. But he opened his eyes to watery sunlight at the window, the evening and Rick both already slipped away. Shane had to let it lie now. They would both pretend it hadn’t happened, that Shane was too drunk to remember, that Rick hadn’t actually bared a sliver of his soul.

Shane could live with it. It was getting easier and easier to play the part he’d been cast into. Rick was better off thinking Shane was ashamed of him, of what two men might mean to each other. The real thing was more dangerous, because what flayed Shane’s skin to pieces wasn’t that he’d put his mouth, his hands, on his brother. It was that he’d do it again, without hesitation, his greatest desire, if he ever got the chance.

***

Shane was able to put things behind him. Rick certainly put things behind him—married straight out of college, Lori two months gone though no one but Shane knew it. He stood beside Rick at the altar, his first time inside a church, stained glass windows casting colored shadows like morning light on mountains. Rick married and Shane’s problems finally over, no more worries, no lingering looks between them. They could be brothers, almost. As close as they were ever gonna get.

 

***

Rick’s dad took sick the winter Carl turned three. Shane didn’t go around the Grimes’ old place enough anymore to see it happen, but Rick would confess his fears to Shane while they sat keeping an eye out for speeders on patrol. Weight loss. Muscle weakness. Fatigue. Shane didn’t know much about medicine beyond the first aid the department taught them, but it couldn’t be good. It had to be something real bad if Rick were worried enough to bring it up without Shane hassling him.

The official diagnosis came just after Christmas. Cancer. Rick didn’t say the kind, so Shane figured it was the personal type, somewhere too intimate for anyone outside the family to be privy to.

The Grimes’ had a bit of a honeymoon period before things got really bad. Rick and his dad and Carl went to a baseball game in Atlanta. Mrs. Grimes had Rick and Lori and Carl over for nightly dinners. Rick spent a weekend camping in the mountains with his dad. But it went to shit pretty quickly, as all things did.

Rick’s dad collapsed getting out of the shower. Knocked his head against the edge of the bathtub. Mrs. Grimes wasn’t strong enough to do anything about it, had to kneel in the growing puddle of her husband’s blood, pretty white tile stained pink forever, and wait for an ambulance. Shane and Rick were supposed to respond to the call, but Shane saw the address, and passed it off to another unit instead.

Every day after work Rick visited his dad in the hospital. It gnawed on him. Shane could see it. Could see the weight Rick was losing from the stress and little he was eating. Could see Lori’s eyes increasingly haunted, her whole world narrowed down to keeping Rick from coming apart.

“I need your help Shane,” she confessed to him. “I can’t lose him to this.”

“Whatever you need,” he said, taking a break from making faces at Carl. “You know I’m always here.”

Most of Shane’s time he spent at his house with Carl, entertaining him with endless games of hide and seek and cookies before supper, allowing Rick and Lori and Mrs. Grimes their time at the hospital to grieve. He was glad for Carl. Carl was the excuse he needed to stay away.

He paid his respects as much as was expected, stopping in every so often, more for Rick than the man dying. Dropping off a bouquet of flowers was just one more thing to do for Rick.

Shane swung by the hospital with a loaf of bread one of the ladies at dispatch had made. She was sweet on Rick in a grandmotherly way. Lori was home with Carl for the evening so his babysitting services weren’t needed. He planned on making a brief appearance before heading out to drink.

When he walked in the room Mrs. Grimes was sobbing. Rick looked lost, a hand on his mother, his blue eyes shadowed, face the color of sun-bleached bone. Shane thought it must have been over, but there was no dead body, machines and supports still whirring. Rick’s dad wasn’t gone yet.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Grimes said, tear-lines in her makeup. She wouldn’t look at Shane. “Shane you shouldn’t have to see me like this.”

“It’s alright, Mom.” Rick assured her, rubbing her back.

Shane set the bread down, wrapped in a linen, and touched her trembling hand. It felt wrong, like he was breaching some boundary, trying to claim Rick’s mom as his own too. “It’s alright Mrs. Grimes. Things are hard right now, you don’t have to apologize.”

Shane approached the bed and the withered thing that was his father. “Hey, why don’t you go on down to the cafeteria and get some coffee. Or a sandwich or somethin’. I’ll stay here with Mr. Grimes. You need a break.”

Mrs. Grimes nodded. “Thank you, Shane. No coffee but maybe some tea, Rick? To settle my nerves.”

“Of course mom.” Rick gave his mother his arm, he looked back, over his shoulder, and nodded at Shane.

Then it was just the two of them. Growing up, Shane had always admired Rick’s father. He’d been honest, supporting, and strong. He was the kind of father Shane imagined having, maybe because he was the only example of a dad Shane ever really saw outside of the families on TV. When he and Rick and their father were together, sometimes Shane had pretended that he _was_ his dad rather than some faceless man living it up in the desert sand.

Shane’s father was a whole different man now. His skin was pulled tight across his body like it was shrinking. Shane could see the outlines of his bones and the places they came together. His hair was the color of ash or dull stone.

His father opened his eyes. Green eyes. In that way, both Shane and Rick took after their mothers. They’d never look in the mirror and see their father’s eyes staring back. Dad smiled. “Son,” he rasped, lips thin as paper. “Come sit with me.”

He held out his hand and Shane took it. He held it with a detached sort of reverence, the way he might have held a Bible had the Grimes’ ever seen fit to bring him along to church.

“You in pain?” He asked, for lack of anything better, studying the line of the IV and the numbers beeping on the display of the breathing machine. They made about as much sense to him as gibberish. It seemed the right thing to do, to ask these kind of questions, to try for once to be his father’s son.

“No, no. They gave me something already.”

“Good, good. You let me know if it starts to hurt again though. I’ll get a nurse.”

His father hummed. Smacked his lips together. Shane grabbed the plastic cup on the bedside table and held the straw so he could drink. One sip and his dad was gagging, coughing up the trickle of water. Shane wiped him clean.

“Sorry. Gettin’ hard to swallow,” his dad explained.

Shane had never been close to death like this before. Not death as it took its natural course, played out with a finality that wasn’t premature. He’d seen bodies shot and stabbed, mangled pulps of people they helped pull from wreckages. He’d ended a few lives himself in the line of duty, fired and never missed. This was more real, this gave him a horrible sense of awe. He saw what they had to look forward to, the desiccated husk life would whittle them down to one day.

“Talk to me, son. Tell me something good.”

“Uh. Mom wanted me to let you know she’s thinking about you. She hopes you’re comfortable.” She’d said no such thing, halfway through a second bottle of wine when Shane told her. She’d spilled a little Merlot on the yellow sofa at the news. “And I started trying to teach Carl how to play cards. Right now we just kinda play poker by color, since he don’t really know his numbers. I thought he musta been slow but Lori said it’s normal for a toddler. She was pretty offended I asked.”

“How is Carl doing?”

“He’s good. Real good. Gettin’ so big I can’t believe he was ever a baby. Accidentally taught him to say shit the other day. Lori was so mad, but me and Rick just busted up, it was fuckin’ perfect. Lori’d made this awful roast. She musta forgot about it in the oven or something, it was drier than a nun’s…” Shane thought better and coughed into his hand. “Uh, well, it was dry, let’s leave it at that. And so Lori spends time cutting it up for Carl into little pieces and he takes one bite and goes ‘this is shit’ and dumps it on the floor. Oh god, I ain’t never laughed so hard.”

His father chuckled. “That’s my boy.”

“Yeah, don’t think I’m gonna get asked to watch him anytime soon. But y’know, it’s her fault when you think about it. She’s the one who expected me to get through her vegetarian lasagna the other day without complaining.”

“I’m glad you’re here with me,” his father said, thick with emotion, tears shining in his eyes.

“Yeah, me too. I’m sorry...I coulda done more, made things better. But I haven’t held it against you in a long time. I want you to know that.”

“I love you son.” His father smiled, eyes drifting shut. He gripped Shane’s wrist tightly and squeezed. “Don’t apologize to me, Rick, you’re the best thing I ever did.”

It hurt like a punch. Like every bone broke inside him at once, splintered ends grinding down. He threw himself to the other side of the room, dimly aware something was ringing, and a flurry of nurses rushed into the room. Shane watched, reeling, his stomach cold and hard. There wasn’t much for the doctors to do. They made a pronouncement, told Shane they were sorry for his loss.

Rick came running in, eyes wild, panicked. Shane couldn’t look, his heartbeat echoed all around him, he stared straight ahead. “I’m sorry, man. I—he went peaceful. He told me to say how much you meant to him.”

Shane knew he should stay, he should be there for Rick to lean on, but he was a coward, he had no strength left in him for Rick today.

He ran. He wasn’t even aware of where he was going. He just knew he needed to be gone.

He ended up at his mother’s. The same house he had grown up in. It looked better now than it had when he was a kid, he’d spent some effort painting and repairing it, now that he had the skills. He needed something to do on Sundays when Rick and Lori and Carl were busy, off to church with the in-laws, hosting BBQs Shane wasn’t invited to. He mowed the lawn and cleaned the gutters for his mother. Sat through a burnt dinner she cooked him once a month. Brought chicken over on the rare occasions she remembered and insisted they celebrate Shabbat.

His mom answered the door quick like she’d been waiting for him. He didn’t have to go through the ritual of knocking until he finally let himself in with the spare key and found her passed out on the rug.

“Honeybug, you’re shivering.” She ushered him inside and onto the couch. “Come sit and tell me about it.”

“Mom,” he got as far as that before his eyes went hot, throat constricted, the center of his chest turned to lead. “Rick’s dad, he—he..”

“Oh sugar.” She opened her arms for him. Shane let himself be held by her, let himself find some comfort in the arms of his mother, the way he had back when he was a boy and it was just the two of them, before school, before Rick. “Eliza called and told me, I am so so sorry. You just let it hurt.”

He wept and hated himself for it. For his weakness. For feeling broken up over a man he‘d never really met. “Shhhh, baby, oh my sweet boy,” Mom cooed, rubbing his pack, petting his curls. “You’re made of diamonds, baby. This is nothing you can’t make it through.”

She took his face in her hands, kissed his tear damp cheeks.

“You’re allowed to feel broken up by this. He was your daddy, that’s one thing he couldn’t choose. He made you. No matter what that’s special—he can’t ever take back making you.”

He and Mom went together to the funeral. Mom stood with Mrs. Grimes, an arm around her, the two of them twin grieving widows in black. Shane wondered what she felt in all of this. If she had loved him or if he’d been a fling that might have been long forgotten if not for the baby they’d made together. He had never asked her. He’d been too mad to care when she first told him the truth.

He and Rick were pallbearers. It was strange, to heft the remains of his father over his shoulder, to stand up there beside Rick and a handful of uncles and cousins, people he was technically related to but had never met. Shane thought he could take the whole weight of the coffin, bear his father upon his back, smelling soft and faintly sweet of cedar, and walk him to his final resting place alone. Instead he was the outlier, the lone stranger among a family, helping guide Joseph Grimes to his grave through swirling snow.

Lori handed Carl to him at the graveside. She and Rick stood off on their own, close to the coffin, wrapped up in each other. She kissed Rick’s face every so often, folded both of his hands in hers to keep them warm. Carl was clingy, upset by the cold and the crying, and he turned, whining, into Shane’s chest. “Yeah bud, me too,” Shane whispered, clutching Carl like a lifeline, and when the preacher started talking, he hid his face in Carl’s snowy hair. Breathed in his kid smell, that baby shampoo Lori insisted on using, and it was easier to survive this, in the tiny embrace of his family, one of the only three he had.

He had looked up what it meant when Rick and Lori first asked him to be Carl’s godfather. The responsibility scared the shit out of him, and he told Rick as much the night before the Christening.

“I dunno man. Responsible for his religious and moral upbringing? I don’t think I’m the right guy for that. I thought the Lord’s Prayer was the name of a Blue Oyster Cult song.”

Rick laughed. Clapped his back. “Lori and I were thinking it would be more along the lines of a positive male role model should anything ever happen to me.”

That was more doable, then. “You’d be setting the poor kid up for failure if I was supposed to teach him virtue.”

“I’ll leave that to Lori. I think my own morals might be corrupt after so many years knowing you.”

He’d held Carl at his baptism, as was required. He flinched when the priest dribbled holy water on Carl’s naked head and Carl started screaming. Shane was worried it hurt. He choked up, knowing this squalling thing was his nephew, blood of his blood, a little piece of Shane spun into the world. Even worse, he teared up reciting the vows the priest gave to him. Someone snapped a picture of it, Shane with his eyes sparkling like the baptismal waters, Carl, mad as Shane had ever seen him, waving his fists angrily in Shane’s arms.

Shane wondered what picture someone might take now. He and Carl dusted white, heads pressed together, bowed, almost, as if in prayer.

The reception was worse than the funeral. More real. A huge portrait of the Grimes men hung in the parlor. Rick, smiling, a hand on his father’s shoulder. Carl sat in his grandfather’s lap, drooling around a mouthful of his fingers. They’d gone for an official father-son photography session a few months after Carl was born.

Rick’s old aunts fussed over Shane. They’d made it their special project to try and tame his hair when he’d been younger. They’d corner him at every family function he’d been invited to and bring a brush down on him when he wriggled with the ferocity Rick said the nuns wielded their rulers at his Sunday school. Shane thought the old bats had to have been dead by now, it’d been years.

“The family appreciates you stepping in to be a pallbearer so last minute. Rick’s cousin Jeoffrey meant to, but he hurt his knee.”

“Ma’am, it was no trouble,” he said, careful to keep his eyes down. If he made eye contact he was liable to get asked when he was going to find a girl. He never had a good answer for the question. “Excuse me, I’m gonna go give Mrs. Grimes this food.”

Mrs. Grimes was sequestered in the kitchen. She was taking a break from her duty accepting condolences. Rick and Lori were in her place. Shane could hear them beyond the kitchen door, thanking relatives and coworkers for coming.

She was facing the sink. Crying. Shane coughed quietly into his hand. “Just wanted to put this away, I’ll be gone in a second.”

“No, no.” Mrs. Grimes dragged her hands across her hair. She checked that the bobby-pins were still holding up her bun. “I was hoping to get a chance to speak with you privately.”

Shane’s heart beat so hard he thought it would explode. “Yeah. Sure. Do you need something?”

“I wanted to thank you. You and your mama have been a gift to us,” Mrs. Grimes said, dabbing a handkerchief at her eyes. She’d smudged her makeup. He’d never seen her so uncomposed. “We wouldn’t be getting by right now without the two of you.”

“Ma’am it’s our pleasure.”

He gestured awkwardly. He’d forgotten his hands were full.

She nodded, satisfied. She’d been the one to teach Shane his manners. She’d ignored his requests for water or snacks as a kid until he caught on and started calling her ma’am. “Thank your mama for the chicken and dumplings.” Mrs. Grimes took the casserole dish from him and put it in the fridge.

“I made it, actually.” Mrs. Grimes raised an eyebrow at him. “Uh, it was her recipe, but I just,” he moved his hands in a stirring motion, “you know.”

“Shane you’re full of surprises.”

“Women usually tell me I’m full of something else.”

He expected her to smack him or sigh, the way she always had when he got up to mischief, but instead she smiled and made a sound that, had Shane not known her better, might have been laughter. She seemed surprised by it, and then, like a heavy rain cloud finally opening after hours of teasing, she laughed, her head thrown back, whole body shaking. “Oh Shane, that was _bad_.”

“Yeah Rick ain’t much a fan of my jokes either.”

With a watery smile, Mrs. Grimes opened a drawer. “In his will, Joe left these for you.” She took out a small box, inside was something wrapped in cloth. Shane took it, unsure why he’d been left anything. Aside from that brief deathbed confession, he hadn’t spoken to the man in fifteen years.

Inside was a watch. Silver, a little aged by time, the face in need of a polish. A faded Polaroid, creased at the edges, he, Rick, and their father, sitting on the porch swing, side by side. Their father had his arms around them. He and Rick both grinned up at the camera hugely. Shane remembered the day it was taken. Rick’s sixth birthday. He’d wanted to go into the city for an Atlanta Falcons game and he wanted Shane to come along. They’d been spoiled that day, treated to hats and hotdogs and ice cream. It was the moment that made Shane realize he was missing out on something by not having a dad.

“Ma’am I can’t, I can’t take these. Rick should have them.”

She cupped his cheek and that was worse than the laughter. Her soft hand felt like pity. “Rick has an entire attic of things his father left to him. Joe was adamant in his will that these be yours. Growing up you were like a son to him.”  


***

Rick surprised Shane by knocking on his door one night. Not late, not by Shane’s standards, but late for anyone with a toddler at home. For a minute Shane thought he’d gotten his shifts mixed up and he was supposed to be working. Then he saw the slope to Rick’s shoulders. The lost baby deer look in his eyes. Something wicked was coming.

“Big man, look at you, out past eight-thirty,” Shane said. “If you’re here to tell me we forgot to dot some i’s on our paperwork I’m laying you out.”

Rick didn’t even bother to fake a smile. “Lori took Carl to her mom’s house.” Rick stopped, gave Shane a once over, and his shoulders drooped further. Any more and he’d be flat on the ground. “Were you going somewhere?”

“I was just gonna…” It was easy enough from looking at him to tell what he was going to do. He didn’t wear jeans for nothing. “Don’t matter. C’mon in. You want beer or whiskey?”

Rick dropped his overnight bag in the middle of the foyer. It was full to bursting. “Whiskey then,” Shane said.

Rick flopped himself down on the couch and didn’t move. Shane didn’t know what to do about that. He made a strategic retreat into the kitchen. Whiskey wouldn’t much lift Rick’s spirits but it would at least help him sleep.

He made some fried egg sandwiches to go with the whiskey. Rick would puke if he didn’t get some food in him before the drinking. He thought Rick might also appreciate having some comfort food, a little bit of the past. Shane had always made egg sandwiches when they were kids and Rick slept over. They were one of the first things he’d learned to cook. He’d been embarrassed when Rick had caught him in the act. He’d been careful to always wake up before Rick and sneak out into the kitchen. He didn’t want to hear Rick ask him why his mama was still in bed so late in the morning. But when Rick wandered in, rubbing sleep from his eyelids, he just climbed up and sat on the countertop watching.

“My mom always wears an apron when she’s cooking,” he said.

“How ‘bout you wear this,” Shane said, flipping Rick the middle finger, and they both started laughing. Laughed so hard Rick fell off the counter and Shane dropped one of the fried eggs onto the floor.

Eventually he’d learned to toast the bread, add cheese, grease it up with butter. It was never a feast like Mrs. Grimes cooked up for them on Saturday mornings, but it wasn’t bad. And Rick had never once asked.

“You alive?” Shane toed Rick’s ankle hanging off the edge of the couch. Rick’s muffled reply into the cushion might have been a yes. “I made some sandwiches. I don’t think either of us wants a repeat of the station Christmas party.”

Rick sat up. His face was blotchy. “I paid Cheryl’s dry cleaning bill.”

“After her lawyer brother threatened you with arbitration. All that fuss over an ugly as shit mink sweater.”

Rick shrugged and drank straight from the bottle. Shane had only seen him do that once before, on the night of his bachelor party, and that was only because he had a dozen guys egging him on. It had to be the beginning of something real awful, the start of an inexorable slide into marital decline. Shane’s skin tingled with a feeling that wasn’t quite excitement.

He waited a while. Long enough for Rick to pick his way through a sandwich and chase it down with a few hefty slugs of liquor. Long enough for Rick to go a little boneless and loose lipped.

“I take it Lori ain’t on a planned vacation?”

Rick took another big swallow. Wiped his mouth. The whiskey burned his lips red. “You could say that.”

“I can say a lot of things man. Don’t know if you’re gonna want to hear any of ‘em, might be better if you tell me what’s going on.”

“Something’s wrong. Lori says I’m different, things are different. She says I’m a stranger in the house.”

Shane had to go for his own pull of whiskey. “You just lost your dad. You’re still grieving.” He’d noticed Rick was more morose than usual. He’d assumed it was normal—it wasn’t like he’d know from experience. It had torn Shane up enough to lose the possibility of having a father. For Rick it had to be worse.

“I don’t know.” Rick lay his head on the back of the couch. He rubbed his wet mouth. “Dad dying...maybe now I’m just too tired to pretend.”

That set Shane to thinking. Rick and Lori were picture perfect, they were the photographs that came inside the frames when you bought them. They had a whirlwind romance, childhood sweethearts that had gone the distance. That was supposed to be the dream. “I don’t get it, Rick.”

Rick rolled the bottle of whiskey between his hands. “I thought it would be easy. Being with her, loving her. But sometimes there’s these silences...and it’s like there’s a canyon between us, and I don’t know how to get across.”

“Man that’s just relationship stuff. There’s rough patches. Trust me when I say that half of what women do is bitch at you, it ain’t personal. Sometimes you even deserve it.”

“I asked her how she could do this to me.” The raw pain in Rick’s face was startling. He looked like he had at his father’s funeral, haunted, like he envied the nothingness of death. “I came home from work and she had the car ready. She didn’t even give me a chance.”

Shane made to start talking, but Rick shook his head. Continued. “All I could think of as I watched her drive away was that quote our French teacher used to say when we failed an assignment. C’est la vie.”

Shane shrugged helplessly. “Brother, you know I’m no good with languages.”

A smile. Or the hint of one. Enough to crease in the corner of Rick’s blue eyes. “You might have been better if you hadn’t told Mademoiselle Colette you wanted your French name to be Pepe le Pew.”

Shane grinned. “That week of detention was worth it. So was having to take Spanish with Mr. Rodriguez after she kicked me out of class.”

He could tell no amount of joking was going to lift Rick’s mood this time. Something had happened. Something worse than usual. Something Rick couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell him. He didn’t like the abrupt change of circumstance. Shane was supposed to be the secret keeper between them.

“Rick, I know this is hard right now…”

Rick touched his shoulder. “Can we just sit here? Please.”

“Yeah, of course.”

Shane turned on the TV to some old movie station. They made steady progress through the whiskey as black and white cowboys and Indians shot at each other on the screen. Finally when it was nearing midnight Shane switched it off. Rick barely blinked.

“C’mon cowboy,” Shane said, woozy himself from the drinking, “let’s rustle ya into bed.” He pulled Rick to standing and Rick went with it, went with him, stumbling, half asleep.

They stumbled their way to the guest bedroom. Shane remembered the sweetness of being taken care of back in college, Rick fussing over him like he was someone special. He wanted to give that to Rick, let Rick have a memory of something nice, something that couldn’t be tainted later, just in case. He tugged Rick’s boots off him. Smoothed down his covers. That old night mirrored in reverse.

He undid Rick’s belt. The sound it made was loud as a church bell, and just as significant. A call to arms, a lamentation, a recompense for the dead. Any other time it would have been nothing, just Shane being helpful, undressing his brother for bed, but tonight it beget something dangerous.

Rick’s eyes met his, his cheeks the color of apples, the whiskey bringing color to him. His hand made its way into Shane’s hair.

Shane froze. It was like they’d never really looked at each other until now. Rick’s eyes gleamed in the lamplight wetly, spun sugar blue.

Rick’s hand was heavy on the top of his head as he guided Shane downward. “Can you,” Rick said to the ceiling, “please.”

Shane had never been much good at self-preservation. “Yeah,” he said.

He pushed up the hem of Rick’s undershirt. Kissed his belly. The jut of his hipbone, less prominent now than it had been when they were younger. Rick had always been a beanpole growing up, never able to put on much muscle, and never enough of an appetite to gain weight. He tugged Rick’s pants down while he busied himself tonguing Rick’s navel, feeling the little surprised jolt of his stomach against his cheek.

Once Rick’s pants were gone there was no sense in teasing. Rick had been through enough today. Shane licked the head, once, just to get Rick gasping. This was familiar. Treading old waters. The smell of Rick overwhelmed his senses, his head deep in Rick’s lap. The hot weight of Rick in his mouth, down his throat, smooth on his tongue like velvet required no thinking, simple and animalistic as it was. Shane let himself get lost in it, some tiny part, the meanness in him, happy to ruin Rick as he’d been ruined himself.

Rick pushed his head up. “Too fast, I’m gonna—”

“Kinda the point there,” he said, teeth on Rick’s thigh. If he bit, would Lori notice?

“No.” Rick sat up, silvered in moonlight. He’d switched off the light at some point. He put a hand on the center of Shane’s chest. “I don’t want it to be like that.”

“How do you want it?” Shane asked, distracted as Rick’s hand slipped underneath his shirt. Rick’s thumb stroked back and forth across his skin.

Rick took his shirt off him. Mouth open like Shane was something to marvel and he nudged Shane until he was on his stomach, back to Rick.

Shane wanted to snort. It figured. Hands, mouths, grinding their cocks together. This was about the only thing they didn’t do.

Rick had wanted to though. He’d taken Shane to bed and asked _please, can we, I’ve never_ and for once Shane had been able then to tell him no and mean it. He didn’t want to steal that first from him, even before he’d known they were brothers, that had been too precious, too sacred.

Now there didn’t seem to be a point.

“Fuck,” Shane said, pushing onto his knees to kick his jeans out of the way. “Okay.”

Rick blanketed him. All those years before and this was the first time they’d been fully naked with each other, nothing between them but the smooth slip of their own skin. He felt Rick’s kiss the base of his hairline.

“You have lube?” Rick asked, mouth on him, and Shane wanted to laugh. He remembered being fourteen and Rick asking him about ‘sex lotion.’

“‘N my pants pocket.”

Rick dipped off the bed to get it. The look he gave Shane when he found not just lube, but a condom, was unimpressed.

Rick started by rubbing his way down Shane’s back. They’d always been frantic as kids. In a rush for the orgasm. Pressed for time, even though Shane’s mom never checked in on them. But that had been part of the fun, the chaos and hurry of their secret, racing to get each other between the sheets. Rick was intent on taking his time now.

Shane wasn’t sure he would be able to do it. Rick’s fingers kneaded into his spine, trying to work out the tension, but a cold dread knotted itself in Shane’s stomach. For years this was what he’d wanted, what he’d been afraid of having, but now, the reality that he was about to be fucked, not just by a man but by his brother, was too much. He started shaking.

“Hey,” Rick backed off, lay back on top of him. His breath was hot against Shane’s ear. Shane could feel how hard Rick was, insistent, and that made it even more real. “We don’t have to. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked for that. I just thought you’d want to.” Rick started to move, then. Up and away, the only thing worse than having gone through with this was to call it quits.

“No. Sorry, ‘m just nervous I guess,” he said. He grabbed the lube from Rick. “Let me.”

It was easier to do it himself. He wasn’t sure he could take Rick’s hands on him and not lose it. Rick kissed the knobs of his spine, his shoulders, while Shane worked his fingers into himself. He could feel Rick’s cock brushing into his hip, hard and getting impossibly harder, the wet sound of Shane’s fingers between his legs was equal parts arousing and obscene.

“Think I’m good,” Shane said when he could fit three inside without effort. His stomach was taught again, with anticipation this time. His own cock was half hard, stirring to life against his thigh. He arranged himself back on his chest, knees into the mattress. He kept his elbows bent.

Rick covered him. Rick’s hand brushed down to feel him. Rick’s thumb caught on him, smeared with slickness, dipping in. Shane moaned and it didn’t sound like him.

“Shh,” Rick whispered. Shane listened as Rick slicked himself, worked his dick over with a slippery fist. “I got you.”

He felt Rick’s cock press against him. This was it, the moment they’d never come back from, and it was so easy, Rick pushed and slid right in. Shane felt the hot length of it inside him, holding him open.

Rick mouthed at his neck. Sloppy. Drunker than Shane had realized. Rick was the one shaking now with the effort, to control himself, to not go off like they were seventeen again, to go through with it. “It’s like I thought it would be,” Rick said. He brought both his arms over to bracket Shane’s. He linked their hands against the coverlet and started thrusting shallow, his cock slowly sliding in and out. “Oh god, Shane. You don’t know how much I thought about this.”

“Stop talking,” he panted, thighs aching, tender where Rick’s cock speared into him. Rick’s breath was wet against his shoulder, “stop talking c’mon man _go_.”

Rick’s mouth latched into the meat between his neck and shoulder. That was what Shane wanted, the sound of breathing, of their skin slapping fast together. Each time Rick thrust back in Shane got looser until it was nothing, shivery pleasure, his dick brushing against the blankets. He had to let go of Rick and bring a hand down to get himself off with, and he felt when Rick came inside him, felt Rick’s teeth sharper than teasing.

They lay in bed without talking after. Facing away from each other. Rick was an outline in the dark.

Rick spoke when Shane was starting to fall asleep, the sound of Rick’s voice jolted him back to consciousness. “Do you remember the weekend your mom went on that business trip?”

Shane remembered the flare of shame that burned his bones like fire, having to knock hungry on the Grimes’ door. They were kind about it too, didn’t ask what kind of business trip a waitress went on. They just smiled and let him in. Let him stay the weekend camped out on Rick’s bedroom floor.

“Yeah,” he said. Rick didn’t want questions, didn’t want Shane’s input. Rick just wanted to be heard.

“I woke up early on Sunday because I was so excited. You were over and my mom said since we had company we didn’t have to go to church. I wanted to pack a lunch and ride our bikes to the lake and go swimming. But you were still asleep, you were on your side, facing me. Your hair was everywhere.”

“Jesus,” Shane huffed. “Don’t even talk about that.” He didn’t need reminding of how awkward he’d been at thirteen, all shoulder length hair that grew more in volume than it did in length, giving him a weird half-Afro, because his mom hadn’t been able to bear to let him cut it short again after his first haircut when he was three.

“Your cheek was lit up in the sunlight and your mouth was hanging open and I thought you looked so pretty. That was the start, maybe. I spent years thinking no girl could ever look as good as you.”

Shane’s chest hurt. Deep, aching, full of needles. He was a failing roof in winter, sagging underneath the weight of accumulating snow. And Rick just kept on bringing blizzards.

“Your mama shoulda taken you to the eye doctor. You must have been blind as a bat to not notice my big fuckin’ ears.”

Rick didn’t laugh. He rolled over. Shane couldn’t see Rick’s eyes, but he felt them on him, the hot intensity of Rick’s disapproving stare.

“Don’t,” Rick whispered. “Don’t make it into a joke. Shane I can’t take it. You don’t get how awful it can be.”

Shane swallowed, throat dry from the whiskey. “Yeah, man, okay. But it’s all in the past now. You got Lori and Carl. You were just fixated, you know? Had to get it out of your system. Now you’re done with whatever shit you had with me.”

“That’s what I tell myself. It never seems to keep.”

“Give it time. You’ll feel different tomorrow, I promise.” Shane couldn’t stop himself from drifting, the intensity of the day had him bone tired.

Rick was in bed beside him come morning. Eyes open. He’d been watching Shane sleep.

“I think I’m gonna go see Lori and Carl at her mom’s place,” he said.

Shane nodded. “Bring her some flowers too. The gold ones she had in her bouquet at your wedding. She’d like that.”

He watched Rick get dressed. It was worse than it had been to undress him, knowing now what it had felt like, what the taste of his skin was, how his chest fit against Shane’s back. Shane was pretty sure he had a bite mark somewhere on his shoulder. And that was the worst part in all of this, he was the one coming away with Rick’s mark on him, his brother ground into his skin.

***

“You remember that summer my dad took me fishing?”

Rick looked at him like he‘d lost it. Eyes narrowed. Skin pale as the moon. “Yeah. I do.”

Shane spat a glob of blood from his broken nose. The pain pulsed hard there, each beat of his heart a reminder, urging him to get on with it. He was tired, he just wanted it done. “I lied to you.”

Rick raised an eyebrow. He didn’t lower his gun. Kept scanning the woods like Randall might jump any second out at them, get the drop on them for real.

“My dad didn’t invite me anywhere. I never even met the guy. I ran off.”

“Okay. It was a long time ago, Shane. You were young.” Rick’s breath hung white like fog between them. Shane’s face and hands were cold.

“Shane,” Rick said, his face hard, like it didn’t bother him, but his eyes went sad, just a little. “It didn’t have to be like this.”

A cold breeze swept through the meadow. Shane watched the blades of grass at their feet tremble, caught, in the icy pull of the wind. “Yeah, yeah it did.”

Rick didn’t say much else. He seemed as resigned to it as Shane. Their whole lives had maybe just been steamrolling toward this one moment. Shane wasn’t a history buff, but he knew it was never kind to brothers.

“My mom and your dad were together once. Did you know that?”

That was enough to get Rick’s eyes off his gun.

“It was after your mom left him. They prob’ly never told you that, but they broke up in the summer. They were twenty-two.”

“So what? You’re gonna shoot me to avenge your mama’s honor?” Rick’s tone was incredulous. Furious. Shane wanted to ask him what right he had to be angry. Shane had given him everything when they were younger. His love, his trust, their father. Rick couldn’t even give him this.

“You too stupid to do the math now? They were twenty-two. The end of summer. I was born in May.”

Rick shook his head. “No. What, Shane, can you even hear what you’re saying?”

“You’re so righteous, man, going on about your family. So intent on how they’re _yours_ , no room for sharing, but you can’t change that we share a daddy.”

He could see it starting to get to Rick. He knew that expression, Rick questioning the world and how he viewed it. The panic of realizing things weren’t exactly as he thought.

“You’re lying. You’re, Shane, that’s, you’d never. What we—what we did, you’d never if you’d known.”

“Would you fuckin’ hush up and listen.” Shane moved a step closer, heart beating so hard it felt like it was screaming. “You don’t know shit about what I’d do.”

“You’ve lost it, Shane.”

“Have I man? You ever really think about it? Your dad left his watch to me. He was always having me over. He had a fuckin’ secret picture of me he kept in his wallet. He couldn’t even _look_ at my mom, I don’t think they spoke to each other the entire time we were growing up.”

He watched the horror take Rick over. Rick’s face fell, he bent at the waist, and moaned. When he straightened his cheeks were tear stained.

Shane had thought it would be satisfying to see Rick brought down to nothing. But it rang hollow. It was like looking at himself all those years ago, freshly eighteen, coming apart in his bathroom, shards of broken mirror in the sink, his fists cut to pieces.

Rick spat into the dirt. This time it was Rick who couldn’t look at him. Rick was more like their father than he could ever know. They had both kept him in their back pockets, saved him for some rainy day yet unknown. Well, he’d learned to make his own sunshine.

“Why?” Rick asked and his face was red from anger. Shane had never seen him so mad, not even when they’d been trading punches. “You’re telling me this now for what? What good does it do us? Why do you have to ruin everything?”

Shane smiled. It hurt his face. “You seemed so hot for it. Always calling me brother. Thought a little deathbed clarity would do you some good.”

It was Shane’s turn to look away. Over Rick’s shoulder. At that horrible, fat moon hanging heavy as a silver dollar.

“I forgive you,” Rick said, so sudden Shane wasn’t sure he’d heard it.

“What?”

“I forgive you,” Rick repeated. He lowered his gun by inches. “Shane, I’m so sorry you had to live with this. Brother, we can come back from this. We can make things better.”

Shane considered it. What Rick was offering him, what would it look like? His nephew, his brother, his baby, he wanted so much it was hard to tell. He didn’t know what felt right anymore. He started to lower his gun.

Rick lunged. Shane’s finger slipped on the trigger. Something split inside his ribs. A white agony climbed through him, unfurled from his spine and boiled his blood. When the roaring stopped, he was staring up at a sky full of glass cut diamonds. He watched the huge full moon.

He felt nothing now. Not the wind on his skin like a dagger. Not Rick’s hands covering his, almost tender, skiddy with Shane’s own blood.

“I had this vision out in the desert,” he said but it was blood not words that bubbled from his mouth. He kept trying. He wanted Rick to hurt in this last moment with him.

_I dreamed loving you would be the end of me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be a final chapter with Rick sometime in the future!


End file.
